


On the Arrow

by coley_merrin



Category: Super Junior, Super Junior-M
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1365610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coley_merrin/pseuds/coley_merrin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To have a throne and a crown was to hold all the power, or so Kyuhyun thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Arrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saebeok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saebeok/gifts).



***

Kyuhyun wondered, when he touched the heads of children brought to him to be blessed, if the parents standing back could see the anger in him. Not on his face, no, because showing it would have meant danger for the very children he meant to protect. They looked at him and they saw their king, and he looked back and he saw a false sense of freedom. A false sense of hope.

The armor he wore was a statement, a showpiece. It marked him as ready for battle, as though he might draw his sword and run someone through at a moment’s notice. It marked him as a leader, a general, proof of his power and his ability to protect. His face was impassive as he looked over the people, meeting no eyes but taking in clothes once fine that were ragged, hair neat but unwashed. They were putting on a show for their leader, the man they believed would look out for them and restore their land to its former glory.

How wrong they were.

***

The moment Kyuhyun was out of sight, his scabbard was taken. Why, he wasn’t sure because though there was a hilt, what was below it was common wood. At most, he could have bludgeoned someone with it. Kyuhyun had not given away his power, had not woken one morning to a dagger at his throat. Perhaps it had started with the untimely passing of his father. Maybe if he’d been more vigilant, key members of his council wouldn’t have acted, members of the guard replaced. Had they not known that the allies of the country would have stormed in in the event of a full-on coup, Kyuhyun was instead a shadow of a leader in his own kingdom. He was a slave to greed, one man after the other chosen to play his caretaker, to guard his correspondence, his movements, and nearly even his thoughts.

It had not only been power, some move to dabble in politics at a larger scale, but also greed. They had insatiable need for wealth. When the storehouses, the treasure, the grain reserves had all been depleted, they had taken every last one of the jewelry, the family treasures of which some were not worth more than memories. Maybe they did it mostly out of spite. The only thing they didn’t take was his crown, but if they could have he suspected they’d have found a way. He’d thought a hundred times of trying to find an ally, but every month that passed made that seem less and less likely. There was no one he spoke to who would help. It would mean a more hasty end to his life, he assumed. He wondered what illness they would conjure to end him.

But Kyuhyun stopped short in the throne room to see he was not alone. The armor his father had commissioned for him sat heavy on his shoulders to see an intruder there, where once none would have dared entered without Kyuhyun’s permission.

The man sat on the seat his father had sat upon, his grandfather. He was glad to know they had not lived to see their kingdom shamed so. It had been Kyuhyun’s seat until their invasion of rats had nibbled at his ankles and fanned his pride. The man who sat there was exaggerated in every way from his nose to the length of his legs and the draping robes that hung around him in brilliant shades of blue. He was like one of the brightly colored birds his father had been so fond of in the garden, calling attention to himself with every breath, just by existing. And he defiled Kyuhyun’s throne just by sitting on it.

“I am your new advisor, Your Majesty.” And every word was mockery. “You may call me Zhou Mi. This way.”

At least this Zhou Mi, this filth, had the courage to face him. Though what was he, like some impotent child-king without even any sword. Without any power. He followed Zhou Mi because it meant that Zhou Mi would leave the throne room. There was that, at least.

“They have allowed you to stay in the king’s quarters out of some respect for your…position,” Zhou Mi said, leading him into a side corridor. He was being marched along by guards holding each of his arms and he wished he had a dagger to sink between the ribs of the back in front of him. There, the sweet spot, where he could twist and there would be barely a cry before knees buckled.

“I have toured those quarters earlier,” Zhou Mi said, “while you were making nice with the commoners. But there are windows there, and bookshelves. Dangers to you and your guards. Your safety is paramount, you know. I was able to find something more…suiting.”

The room Zhou Mi led them into was small, barely twice over wide enough for the bed along one wall and the slim closet door facing it. It had no windows. Just a small table and a plain bed with a thin pillow and blankets folded on it. The castle servants had more.

“Close to the throne room, showing your dedication,” Zhou Mi said. “Perfect for our king.”

So no longer was he going to be stripped of his power, a figurehead, he was also going to be a prisoner. When he walked up to Zhou Mi, there was no flinching, just Zhou Mi steadily looking back at him.

“I would fight you with my very last breath,” Kyuhyun promised, so close that Zhou Mi had to have felt it.

And he wished he’d spit in truth when Zhou Mi leaned even closer, challenge lighting in his head. “I welcome it.”

Zhou Mi turned from him before Kyuhyun could leap on him, beat on him, try to alleviate some of the anger boiling in him. It saved Kyuhyun a beating or worse, as the guards crossed their spears over the door so that Kyuhyun could not follow.

He closed the door from the inside. It afforded him privacy, if nothing else.

***

Instead of a council, the ones who had fled and the ones who had betrayed him, he had lackeys and overseers, and Zhou Mi. Maybe it was to make sure he never got his hands on paper, Kyuhyun wasn’t really sure. Zhou Mi asked shrewd questions, which Kyuhyun did his best to ignore for the first hour as Zhou Mi went ahead and did whatever he wanted despite Kyuhyun’s lack of input. It was at one point, choosing how to distribute the dwindling grain reserves, that Kyuhyun spoke up.

“You shouldn’t do that. If you send it out of the city—“

“You speak after the decision is made?” Zhou Mi said. “Too late, like too many other things.”

“You haven’t lived here as I have. I have no reason to lie. If the harvest is worse, the closer it is to the city, the better.”

“So be it,” Zhou Mi said. “And what do you have to say about the soldiers stationed to the south? They are a drain on resources.”

“But no good comes from bringing them closer. They’re the only hope we have of holding against Southern raiders.”

“Perhaps we need to contract with a village closer, to keep from diverting resources from the city proper.”

“The villages are taxed to their limits already,” Kyuhyun pointed out, and the knowledge of it was bitter in his mouth. “Unless you can have them squeeze grain from their blood.”

“A lightening of their burden would be appropriate, one for the other. Since they would be closest, and most in danger, they should be glad to see their resources going directly to their safety instead of to a king most of them have never seen.”

The way Zhou Mi grinned, he knew he’d gotten Kyuhyun to react to the dig. Because of course the taxes weren’t going to Kyuhyun, who slept in a cell and was subject to searches like a common criminal. One that very day even with Zhou Mi following him into his cell, inspecting the small closet and under the mattress for contraband. He’d been granted a single book with numbered pages that Zhou Mi flipped through. It was humiliating.

“What sort of man is chosen as you have been?” Kyuhyun asked, keeping his tone even. “Are you power hungry? Eager to manipulate? Or an obedient dog of someone who is both of those things but too cowardly to do them himself.”

“I would not call myself a dog, nor obedient. I do what I must, in the most expedient way,” Zhou Mi said. “Perhaps you have no family left, but I do. It’s a pity they don’t know their son is living as, well. A king. There will be more to do tomorrow. Your Majesty.”

And with that mocking answer, Zhou Mi left him. One person. If he had just one person he would have relied on, confided in, maybe it wouldn’t have felt so bad, made him feel so weak. There were people out there who would support him, he knew that. But he knew that involving them was danger itself.

***

It was Kyuhyun who was the dog, trotting at Zhou Mi’s heels on his command, touring one of the villages with Zhou Mi at his elbow in case he stepped out of line. He knew he would not be run through if he spoke out of turn, but the people he spoke to could be harmed. The tiny children peeking around their mother’s skirts, the women who worked, the men. They didn’t know they worked for a king who wasn’t, that their taxes and gifts went to others who weren’t him. They were hungry and exhausted and they had hope as they pleaded with him, that he could ease their suffering. And it made him sick that he could not. Though his own situation was humiliating, it was nothing to them, working their hands raw only to see their gain removed. Zhou Mi said nothing when he noticed Kyuhyun handing out the food intended for his own lunch to children who greeted him.

“I hope the men who steal the food from the mouths of those children have a gut ache that does not end,” Kyuhyun said, as he watched Zhou Mi pick delicately at his own food. It was not too much to hope that Zhou Mi himself was hit with such an ailment. It was hard to mock Kyuhyun if he was rolling on the floor in pain.

And Zhou Mi’s glance at him was amused, as though he’d read between the lines.

“Why didn’t you stop me?”

One shoulder lifted, a lazy movement. “I am grateful to them, showing me how I need to watch over your…decisions in the future. But we have spent enough time. There will be need of a very hot bath on our return.”

As though his people were filthy. And Kyuhyun stewed, not wanting to give Zhou Mi the benefit of his thoughts on the way him, to see that smirk or hear some lecture. But on the threat of being closed in his little cell on their return, he could hold back no more.

“We have to do something to feed the people, to ease their hardships,” Kyuhyun said. “Have you no heart? Did you not see them?”

“We?” Zhou Mi asked, laughing. “That was your purpose, before you lost it. They will seek a new king, if the one they have will not do his duty.”

And whose fault was that? Kyuhyun hissed, lifting the gold medallion that was his own family’s crest from around his neck. And he spoke quiet, close enough so that only Zhou Mi could hear him. “I beg you. Trade this for grain and send it to them in secret. You need not be involved. I can’t see them like that and do nothing.”

“I’m surprised this was not taken from you already,” Zhou Mi asked, turning the medallion over in his hands.

“I am as well. You have already taken everything that belonged to my family and my people. The only thing left of value is that and my crown.”

For a moment, Zhou Mi considered him, and for a moment, Kyuhyun nearly had hope.

“Not every treasure of your family has been lost,” Zhou Mi said, his finger trailing along Kyuhyun’s collarbone.

The guards outside the room sniggered, and Kyuhyun snarled as he slapped away Zhou Mi’s hand.

“You are vile.”

Zhou Mi brushed his hands together, as though Kyuhyun had done as little as breathe at him. “Perhaps. But I thank you for this little bauble. It will fill mouths, though perhaps not the ones you intended.”

But in the doorway, Zhou Mi turned back smirked, as though he had thought of a rebuttal.

“Since he wants more food available for his people, there will be no dinner for our little king this evening,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” they both said in unison.

There was nothing left in his room to throw, or he would have thrown it. Let Zhou Mi have his petty little victories. Let him think he’d won. But it only proved again that Kyuhyun had lost. He’d given up yet another piece of himself and his history in hopes that Zhou Mi would see reason, to choose compassion over greed.

***

Zhou Mi was true to his word that there was no dinner, and it took only one sharp word from Kyuhyun to make that a full week of no evening meals. It wasn’t much, and could have been so much worse, and yet it didn’t keep him from chafing. He was like a child being reprimanded, with no right to privacy as Zhou Mi inspected his little cell daily as though someone would dare to bring him contraband. Though, to Kyuhyun’s surprise, someone did. Maybe it was a guard who felt sorry for him, but he found a piece of bread topped with dried fruit on the lowest shelf in the closet. At first he ignored it, imagining Zhou Mi had left it as a test, one that would make him sick and teach him a lesson. But then, he imagined Zhou Mi finding it and seeking to punish the person who had left it. So Kyuhyun ate it, leaving no crumb behind and grateful. He tried smiling at the guards, because if it was not them, then they had let someone in to leave it. He got only sneers in return.

Kyuhyun always checked the shelf after Zhou Mi had left, but there was always nothing. He wasn’t sure why he’d wondered, Zhou Mi dismissive of him as ever. And all Zhou Mi did was flaunt him. If Kyuhyun said he took correspondence from the villages at the council table, Zhou Mi forced him to sit in the library and seethe as Zhou Mi sipped tea and read the missives as though they were amusing works.

Kyuhyun knew they were pleas.

“They’ll work harder next year, plant more,” Zhou Mi said, shrugging.

“If they survive the winter! At least you haven’t forbid them from hunting in the forests.”

Zhou Mi smiled at the paper in his hands. “Should we?”

“There is no _we_ in this,” Kyuhyun shouted, almost trembling as he stood.

“Good, then you understand,” Zhou Mi said.

“You will not treat my people—“

“Remove him,” Zhou Mi said, and Kyuhyun was not led, but nearly half dragged to his little room. He would have broken the walls, if he could have done it. He would have screamed. But he had no window to scream from.

When he slept, it was uneasy, clawing at hands over his face, keeping him from breathing. Zhou Mi’s hand, Zhou Mi’s garish face as he smothered the life from him. He woke grasping at his face, gasping and shaken. He wondered if it’d only be a matter of time before that happened. Zhou Mi would be pleased. But Zhou Mi wouldn’t have anyone to watch suffer.

Kyuhyun had nearly drifted off again when he heard a faint rattle. It wasn’t the door. Something else. The closet. His mystery giver.

He barely breathed as he climbed out of bed, shifting across the few feet so he could reach for the latch. He took one slow inhale, noting the faint glow from under the door. It was a friend. Behind the door was a friend. He didn’t have to be afraid.

The cloth was bright, the body endless, and he opened his mouth to shout just moments after a hand curled into his collar and pulled him forward. A palm, wide, pressed over his mouth. Just like his dream, just like his—

“Quiet,” Zhou Mi ordered, close and hushed. “Be still. Make no sound.”

When Zhou Mi was satisfied, he took his hand from Kyuhyun’s mouth and pulled the closet door closed. And even then, he didn’t let go of the cloth of Kyuhyun’s shirt. Behind Zhou Mi, the wall was gone, opening to a whole other room. Zhou Mi had discovered how someone was bringing him food. If he’d been watching, maybe he knew.

“I didn’t—“ he started to protect, to protect whoever had been helping him.

“Quiet. We don’t have have much time, and there is much to tell you.”

Tell him, of what. He couldn’t fathom what Zhou Mi could possibly have to tell him that he could not while stripping him of his humanity as well as his power.

“I know you hate me, but you must listen. Listen,” Zhou Mi insisted, voice barely above a whisper. “And if not that, then see.”

What Zhou Mi lifted was a half of a coin, nearly half the size of his palm. It was old, dozens of years older than he was and he had seen it only once in the hands of his father. It was a token, his father had told him, letting Kyuhyun touched the jagged edges. A coin rent in half for two families to swear on. If he was to find the other half of that coin, he would know it was in the hands of a friend.

But it was Kyuhyun’s half that Zhou Mi held, stolen from them.

“You bastard!“ he breathed.

“Yes, this was taken from you,” Zhou Mi hissed. “From your own room where your father had probably kept it safe. I brought it to you, because you wouldn’t have believed me otherwise. It was too dangerous to travel with my own half, if anyone should suspect. But _look._ ”

In the dim light, Kyuhyun could see the shine of flesh on Zhou Mi’s bared shoulder, paler than that around it. It was in the shape of a half moon— a half coin. Ridges and designs could almost be made out, it was so distinct. It was not his own coin half flipped, but its own distinct pattern. And when Kyuhyun lifted the coin in his hand, the edges matched almost perfectly to the burn.

His first thought was treachery, another lie in a series of lies and betrayals. But the burn was not fresh, clearly healed and faded from many years of living. He knew, because he bore one quite similar on the opposite side of his chest.

“That’s not possible.”

“But it is. How I came to be here is a longer tale than we have time for, but I reveal myself now because the time is almost here to remove these bastards from your fortress and your lands.”

Kyuhyun shook his head, not believing Zhou Mi. Not believing any of it. And yet it was too incredible not to be true, grasping at it and pushing it away in equal measure. His salvation was there, and it had the face of someone he had thought his enemy. If not for that scar, he would have thought it was a terrible lie, another manipulation destined to bring him to his knees. And even then, he couldn’t understand all he’d witnessed, why he’d though Zhou Mi was standing so resolute against him.

“Why did you not tell me sooner?”

“It would have tempered your reactions to me, and I did not know who was ally or foe,” Zhou Mi said. “If they thought you were being controlled and beaten down, it allowed me leniency to start taking actions of my own. I couldn’t just order a full change of the guard, men I know to be loyal. Some I had to keep close to make it seem that all was well.”

“Like my guard.”

Zhou Mi nodded. “Yes. It was necessary that you thought…the worst. To hurt you, if there was going to be any chance of saving you.”

“All those missed dinners?” Kyuhyun wondered. “It was you who brought food?”

“There was a reason for my increased inspections besides paranoia and angering you. I had to be sure you were safe, and it had to be under the guise of your anger.”

“You convinced me,” Kyuhyun said. And he was startled to see that Zhou Mi smiled, not the cruel one he’d come to know but genuine, warm. Or maybe it was just his perception of what was behind it that had changed.

“I was born to play the villain. Even if I’m not one underneath. I brought you this back.” Zhou Mi slipped a chain around his neck, the crest of his family that had hung around his neck since his twelfth birthday, placed there by his own father. “If you believe in nothing else, believe in this.”

And what Zhou Mi did not say: to believe in him.

***

It felt like nothing more than a wishful dream when Kyuhyun woke, except for the crest around his neck and the coin in his hand.

Nothing changed. Zhou Mi was the same, dismissive, arrogant. Kyuhyun wondered if he had missed some little hints that Zhou Mi had been supporting him all along, if he was that blind to have not noticed. But after he knew, he still couldn’t tell. If he’d known no better, he’d have believed he was speaking to someone totally different, a twin of an evil side. He even tried to goad Zhou Mi and got nothing but derision.

Except at night, light tapping in the closet that had him springing from his bed and stepping close so that Zhou Mi could speak to him.

“Letters,” Zhou Mi said, holding up a packet in his hand. “Grain is being redistributed to the villages it was stolen from under the guise of planting. The treasury, some of it was lost, but most is being held in an empty cottage. All court documents were preserved, but it is returning the food to the people that most concerns me. From there, anything can be accomplished.”

Kyuhyun could barely believe his ears. “You ignored me today.”

“Did I make you worry?” Zhou Mi asked.

“If you continue to help in secret, you can worry me every day,” Kyuhyun swore, and Zhou Mi huffed out a laugh.

“It isn’t the time to rush in. Moves are being made. I will have no sign I can show you, but we can have some secret between us. If you are unsure, somehow I can quiet your mind.”

Kyuhyun shook his head. “If it is my uncertainty that will see it through, then we’ll keep it that way. I’ll wait on your signal. It’s all I can do.”

Perhaps he stiffened, but Zhou Mi grasped his arm anyway. “You have been doing more than most. You have been trying, even in the face of ugliness. Don’t lose sight of that.”

And in the half-light, they understood each other.

“I won’t come to you like this again until all is set,” Zhou Mi told him.

“If you are found out?”

Zhou Mi stepped back into the room beyond the closet. “I’m not alone in supporting you.”

So Kyuhyun would have to wait. Whether it was a day, or a month. Things were in motion, and that was all he was to know.

***

But it changed, the day that Kyuhyun was ordered out of his room. He walked on his own power, but a guard had each elbow, guiding him after Zhou Mi’s long strides. It was the throne room he was taken to, a crowd of people with interested eyes lining each wall. Only the throne was empty, and Kyuhyun gasped to see Zhou Mi sit in it so casually. He forgot for a long moment that it was all a lie. But the people, he didn’t know why they were there. Zhou Mi, in his quest for humiliation, did not usually let anyone witness it besides those close to the secret. Not just any commoner knew of Kyuhyun’s predicament for so many reasons. Kyuhyun nearly stumbled as he was shoved forward, barely catching himself.

“Your king,” Zhou Mi said, mocking him, and laughter rang out.

Not just any people were in that room, though he knew some of them from around the castle. They weren’t unaware, those who would be appalled, but those who knew. So many. So many involved in his continued betrayal.

“Perhaps he will dance for us, if it means someone is spared a whipping,” Zhou Mi teased, all but sauntering down off of the dais.

“How do you live with yourself, being this…terrible to people?” Kyuhyun asked, meeting Zhou Mi’s eyes when Zhou Mi stopped in front of him.

And Zhou Mi grinned. “From you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

A whipping. He was hoping that was something he was never going to have to see, no matter how long it took. He just had to be patient. There was going to be a day when things changed, when everything changed.

“Since the idea intrigues you so, for your insolence, a man will be beaten. And was it not on your command?” Zhou Mi said.

A man was shoved into the middle of the room, staggering as guards followed him, waiting on Zhou Mi’s command.

“You planned this?”

“These people had to have some entertainment. Beat him until he cannot stand,” Zhou Mi ordered.

Kyuhyun hissed out a breath to see how the faces of his guards brightened. Once it would have made him gag, but right then he had to temper his breaths as his fists curled. It only amused them as they held him when he would have struggled, would have tried to stop it.

The violence of it. The blood, the sound of fists against flesh, the cries of pain and pleas of mercy. It moved him to tears, all eyes on the savagery. The people around the room laughed. Not at the man being beaten bloody, but at Kyuhyun’s fruitless struggles as though he could stop it. Because he cared.

And Zhou Mi stopped it with a hand. Every head craned to see the moaning man, curled in a protecting ball on the hard stone. That had been too much. Too much. Zhou Mi would not meet his eyes when he turned his head. He was ready to do whatever Zhou Mi wanted. Beg. Kneel. Offer to take the man’s place. Kyuhyun was released with a gesture, the guards stepping back.

“You have all seen what this kingdom will become,” Zhou Mi said, and pulled Kyuhyun to him. “A king who beats his people. But for now, the king will see to your reward.”

There was a cheer, at first, and Kyuhyun cringed even as Zhou Mi pulled him closer. But over it, there was the distinctive sound of the drawing of blades, steel at the throats of his two guards, at the throats of others. The false council. 

And the man beaten bloody…stood, a smile lighting his face.

“For the king,” he said.

“For the king!”

It became a shout, Kyuhyun drawing breath as more people stood and pressed those who would fight into submission. The dungeons would be full, but better that than the stomachs of the undeserving.

“From this is the start of everything,” Zhou Mi said. “Your Majesty.”

From just one small place, they had something to start from. People who were loyal, those who were not who would give up the others. He turned, and saw those who bowed, and found himself so close to sure footing for the first time in what felt like an age. He had people. He had people who chose to stand up to fight with him.

At Zhou Mi’s gasp, Kyuhyun turned to see a man with his arm around Zhou Mi.

“Long live the king. Though you will not live to see his return to power.”

There was a wet sound, a flash of metal red with—

“Seize that man,” Kyuhyun ordered the guards as the knife fell and Zhou Mi’s hand pressed into his stomach. “Zhou Mi.”

Zhou Mi sagged into him, his breath harsh.

“We did it.”

“You did it,” Kyuhyun corrected, and then cursed himself because he was arguing with an injured man. There were those around them, worried, friends. “Help me get him to a bed!”

It felt like something tore inside him instead at the sound of pain Zhou Mi made as he was lifted, the whimpers as he was carried to the nearest bed that could be found. Kyuhyun didn’t remember giving the order for healers to be fetched, or water to be boiled, but all those things came. Zhou Mi was shaking, his face pale, and Kyuhyun reached, trying to calm him.

“It’s bad,” Zhou Mi said, breath coming in brief pants.

“The knife was small,” Kyuhyun said. Though it had looked infinite as it had fallen covered in Zhou Mi’s blood.

But he leaned in as Zhou Mi turned, strained to get his head closer to Kyuhyun.

“We played together, do you know? One day long ago. Your father knelt beside me, his hand on my shoulder as we watched you wrestle with a dog nearly as big as you were. He told me that one day I would see your kingdom safe. I am glad—“

“Don’t talk as though you are dying,” Kyuhyun warned, and yet he wasn’t secure enough in that to fight all of the fear. “The wound can’t be that deep.”

Though wet swam in Zhou Mi’s eyes as Kyuhyun clasped one of Zhou Mi’s bloody hands with both of his own. He wondered if he lied to himself, or if he lied to Zhou Mi, or if he believed it. The cloth was sticky with blood as it was pulled from Zhou Mi’s body. No matter how many healers swarmed, he kept ahold of Zhou Mi’s still-trembling hand, and watched. The angry red maw of the wound to the right of Zhou Mi’s navel made him wince but he did not let himself look away. Zhou Mi was moaning in pain as it was cleaned and pressed to stop the blood that kept coming despite their work. Not a lot, but enough to weaken. All they could do was clean the wound, knot it closed. It was something, as though it kept Zhou Mi’s life inside of him.

“There’s no stink in the wound,” a healer said. “If the gut was not opened, perhaps…”

Perhaps. Hope blazed in Kyuhyun’s eyes as he looked to Zhou Mi, but Zhou Mi wouldn’t truly meet his eyes.

“Tell me what can I do for you?” Kyuhyun urged.

Zhou Mi shook his head, looking away even as Kyuhyun shifted their hands, tacky against each other. He wasn’t willing to let go. He knew it wasn’t contact that kept Zhou Mi living, but it was as though feeling Zhou Mi’s warmth would make it continue.

“I can’t—“

“Zhou Mi. Tell me. If there’s anything. Anything.”

Zhou Mi had given him back his kingdom. In some way, he’d given back Kyuhyun his possibility to trust. It wasn’t as though he could say that, telling Zhou Mi that like he expected Zhou Mi to no longer be there to continue that. One of them had to fight, and it was his turn to do that for Zhou Mi.

But Zhou Mi’s lips trembled when he looked to Kyuhyun again.

“If it’s too much… If you could stay, to the end. I lied. I have no family left. Only…”

Only Kyuhyun. Zhou Mi had been that man beside him, working for him, a friend that Kyuhyun had never known he’d had. He realized that for all his assurances that Zhou Mi believed he was dying, and that more than all the lies he told himself had fear clutching in his throat.

“I’m not going to leave you. I’ll give all my proclamations from your bedside,” Kyuhyun promised, and Zhou Mi’s lips curved. “Until you’re well enough to stand by me at the throne.”

He would have promised anything that put Zhou Mi’s heart at ease.

“They say your voice makes birds weep,” Zhou Mi whispered, and Kyuhyun nodded. He could do that, for Zhou Mi, and he steeled himself so that his voice would not waver.

“If you greet the morning, greet it for me, the warmest glow is you,” Kyuhyun sang, watching Zhou Mi’s eyes close as he breathed slow and careful. “Reaching and twirling ’til the sun swallows all the light and all that’s left is sweetness and wine, sweetest—“

He sang until he was nearly hoarse, watching Zhou Mi’s eyelashes twitch with his lyrics, gentle squeezes of his fingers and parting of his lips. And Kyuhyun gasped mid-song as the trembles in Zhou Mi’s hand stopped, the grip of it giving, limp against his palm and fingers.

Kyuhyun looked to the healer who remained, her mouth turned down in a frown as she placed her hand on Zhou Mi’s neck.

“He lives,” she said gently. “But whether he will wake again…?”

No one knew. Kyuhyun brushed his lips over Zhou Mi’s forehead, and watched his shallow breaths. Zhou Mi slept through the night and into the next day, and the wound did not improve. It oozed, first blood and then as night fell again, pus. That was what the healers shook their heads at, as the skin turned angrier. Hot compresses, herbs, onions, honey, they tried everything trying to keep the infection there and not to start spreading toward Zhou Mi’s heart. On the surface, anyway. There were inches of wound into his body that they couldn’t see. When the healers looked to Kyuhyun, their faces said what their words did not: that he should prepare himself because they had done all they could.

One of the healers was with Zhou Mi by the hour, spooning honey water, crushed fruit, broths rich with fat, into his mouth. Some of it was wasted, rolling from Zhou Mi’s slack mouth, but most found its way into him. It kept his skin from going paper-dry, even as the fevers ravaged him. Each day they drained the wound, and hoped, and each day Zhou Mi had his fever dreams, not waking. When Kyuhyun left, it was only of necessity, half an hour of shaking as he addressed his people and raced back through the corridors to find Zhou Mi still living but almost shrunken in the bed as his body fought.

“He says your name,” the woman told him. “It’s like he’s trying to shout it, but can only whisper.”

“That he’s alive days later, does that mean he’s healing? Does it mean nothing of danger was hit?”

She shook her head. “It means he fights, but who can know? All we can do now is wait.”

Patience was not a thing he had a lot of, but he found that he could be patient when he stroked the line of Zhou Mi’s fingers and palm, told him silly stories of horses and getting in trouble for ruining his mother’s sheets by drying his dog with them. When hours stretched to days, a week, Zhou Mi woke twice only to be held down with fear in his eyes and anguish in his voice. They couldn’t risk him ripping open the wound. 

“You’re fine. Zhou Mi, be still. You have to rest, so your body will fight. It’s a royal proclamation, do you understand me?”

Kyuhyun knelt over him, staring into Zhou Mi’s eyes as he spoke. But he wasn’t sure if Zhou Mi saw him or knew him, no recognition in the dark eyes that looked back at him. Perhaps Kyuhyun was just another element of a dream. His heart clutched every time Zhou Mi’s eyelashes sagged closed again, the tension in his neck giving as he slept again.

“Have we passed the worst of it?” Kyuhyun wondered, when the wound began to knit, draining so much less and the fever nearly abated.

“It’s hard to say, sire,” the healer said. “I have seen a man recover from a wound worse than this, to walk, only for the wound to fester from within, eating him up like a rotten melon.”

It wasn’t what Kyuhyun wanted to hear, but perhaps it was what he needed to hear, so that he could be more realistic in his thinking. But as though that mattered, when Zhou Mi drank their offerings and slept without thrashing, eyes moving behind his eyelids as though he were only moments from waking.

***

“Did I die?” Zhou Mi whispered.

Kyuhyun started, leaning forward from the letter he’d been writing when he realized not only had Zhou Mi spoken but that he was looking at Kyuhyun. There was something tired in that even so, something squinting and unsure as though it was effort just to hold his eyes open.

“No,” Kyuhyun said, and nearly laughed until he realized that Zhou Mi was being serious. “Why would you ask that?”

“How am I waking to you?”

Kyuhyun didn’t understand, even as he leaned forward. It was luck, perhaps, that Zhou Mi woke when Kyuhyun wasn’t asleep or working in the temporary council room they’d assembled outside of the sickroom. “I promised you. Do you remember?”

“You hated me.”

No. He realized what Zhou Mi meant, then, that Zhou Mi believed that Kyuhyun had perhaps promised only a dying man something he meant not to keep. It made something righteous rise up in his chest, that he’d carried out his promise as best he could. He wanted to wipe that disbelief from Zhou Mi’s mind as Zhou Mi had for him.

“I hated what I thought you were,” Kyuhyun said, and he reached for Zhou Mi’s hand when he saw Zhou Mi was trying to lift it. At first he wasn’t sure if he should just hold it, or more. Instead, he lifted it, pressed Zhou Mi’s hand against his cheek so that Zhou Mi could feel that he was real. “Zhou Mi, my protector. No greater hero could be found in any kingdom. The healers smile when they see your wound. You’ve become victorious even over your own body.”

And he didn’t realize he cried, until Zhou Mi’s thumb rubbed against his skin, smearing the wet there.

“No tears,” Zhou Mi pleaded, his voice just barely raising above the whisper it had been. As though that would stop the tears, instead of causing more.

“I would rather weep at your health than the sealing of your tomb.” And he kissed the back of Zhou Mi’s fingers to stem his own words, and the strangling tightness in his throat. “You must drink, or the healers will ban me from your bed.”

He fed Zhou Mi half a cup of honeyed water, Zhou Mi’s eyelids dropping with each swallow until they struggled open once more.

“Kyuhyun.”

“Rest,” Kyuhyun urged, cradling Zhou Mi’s hand in his own.

And Zhou Mi slept again, lips curved as though his dreams were pleasant. Kyuhyun believed then, no matter what the healer said, that Zhou Mi would live. He was a man well on his way to health, though his body was weak, and Kyuhyun would see him well again. He had no doubt of that.

***

Zhou Mi stood on shaky legs, but he stood. He was awake for longer and longer each day, feeding himself out of sheer stubbornness and laughing when Kyuhyun frowned at him.

“I have to stand and try to get stronger, or else it will take too long to recover.”

“You’ll forgive me if I imagine you tipping over and breaking like a brittle stick.”

“I’m not brittle,” Zhou Mi promised him, gripping Kyuhyun’s shoulder as he eased past. It was a strong hold, and maybe it would’ve been convincing if Zhou Mi hadn’t been moving quite so slowly.

It felt less horrible to leave the room, as though he’d find Zhou Mi lapsed unconscious with an infection brewing. The wound was closed, at least, but it was angry against the skin of Zhou Mi’s stomach, something his eyes skirted. At least the man responsible for it was in chains. Maybe he’d had a chance moment, maybe he’d always suspected Zhou Mi. The one thing that Kyuhyun couldn’t accept when Zhou Mi pressed gentle fingers beside the wound was when he said: “At least it wasn’t you.”

It made his whole face sour, seeing how Zhou Mi trembled and sighed in obvious relief as he rested back, secure again. Zhou Mi was getting better. He listened as Kyuhyun spoke haltingly of the shouting matches with his new council, backing up Kyuhyun’s ideas and once looking like he wanted to climb out of bed to argue his point. Of course, he didn’t always agree, which didn’t erase the scowls, especially when Zhou Mi pointed out a flaw in Kyuhyun’s ideas.

“Throwing things at them isn’t the way to build stability or trust, even if they are good things,” Zhou Mi said, shifting with obvious discomfort. “Alleviating their suffering, you’ve already done that.”

“They’ll blame me for a long time.”

Zhou Mi just shook his head, smiling as though Kyuhyun’s words were silly. At least one of them thought so. With Zhou Mi conscious and not huffing and puffing, he remembered a long pushed-aside question, one that he’d been wondering since the first time Zhou Mi had woken.

“Did you really believe I’d just leave you there to heal alone?”

There was a wry twist to Zhou Mi’s lips. “I don’t know. I had so many dreams when I was sick, some that I can almost reach and touch and others that shook me but I barely remember. I just know that when I started this, I was resigned knowing that it didn’t matter what you thought of me at the end, as long as you had your throne back.”

“And you’d have gone off to watch so I didn’t squander my place of power again?”

“I knew that wouldn’t happen,” Zhou Mi said.

But Kyuhyun knew better even knowing he had more things to ask than that, asking because there was no one else who knew, no one else who could possibly understand. Kyuhyun couldn’t weaken himself in front of them again as a leader, but Zhou Mi knew every secret.

“I thought I had people around me I could trust before,” Kyuhyun said, and it was half confession, half needing to have the thought out of his head so he didn’t keep mulling it over and over. “I thought all the things I was doing were the right things. I just don’t know how I can…trust myself? I know betrayal can’t be lurking everywhere, but it feels like I failed more than anything.”

It was easier while he talked to look at Zhou Mi’s hand, where he traced the lines on Zhou Mi’s thumb instead of looking at Zhou Mi’s face. He somehow didn’t want disapproval there, Zhou Mi disagreeing with Kyuhyun’s assessment of himself. 

“King or mortal man, all must have a shoulder to lean on at times,” Zhou Mi told him, a hint of lecture and lightness though also something reassuring in his tone. “You have been stripped of innocence, and I wish it wasn’t so. It was not your trust that was to blame, but their deception and empty pockets. Think of your people first. Protect yourself for them. Believe in yourself, for them. You’ll find the loyalty you deserve. I know that just as I know that I will walk across this room without stopping soon.”

“You have a little wisdom in you,” Kyuhyun teased, daring to look up if even for a moment.

All Kyuhyun could see was that Zhou Mi was pleased, his face warming as he looked away again.

***

There were whispers of all the changes that had happened, ripples spreading out from the castle as things changed. Grain was being redistributed with Zhou Mi’s orders of before serving as the framework. Life was starting to turn back to normal, and Kyuhyun was learning to walk in his own place as though he were master of it and not prisoner. It did not stop the grinding in his stomach when he met with his council. Only his discussions with Zhou Mi truly helped to smooth out his worries so that he felt like each and every decision was not the last one, the one that would ruin everything. He didn’t realize how much he’d come to rely on that voice of reason until one day Zhou Mi napped, and Kyuhyun could only stand there in the door of the room and feel something that felt like despair high and tight in his chest. It was an hour, no more, before Zhou Mi woke, and he’d calmed himself just sitting there listening to Zhou Mi breathe.

For a while it seemed like Zhou Mi needed him, relied on him, smiled when he arrived and enjoyed his visits. Kyuhyun wondered if he’d deluded himself into thinking that would continue, when things would be changing. It was a small part of his life he could control, a small point of need he could fulfill with just one person. But even knowing things would change, even when in some way he dreaded it, he didn’t wish it away.

Kyuhyun found Zhou Mi standing still, leaning near a window on one of his daily walks around his room. It didn’t matter how many times he did that without assistance, Kyuhyun was still amazed by it. No longer gaunt, he wasn’t entirely well but so much closer.

“Ah, Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi said, smiling when he caught sight of Kyuhyun in the doorway. The more well Zhou Mi got, the more distant those smiles seemed to become and Kyuhyun didn’t like it. “Or, Your Majesty. I suppose I’ve taken too many liberties there.”

“None that were taken unwillingly,” Kyuhyun said. “May I join you?”

If Zhou Mi was surprised by the question he didn’t show it. “Of course. Actually, I was going to seek you out if you did not find me.”

There was something in that sentence he didn’t like, and he wasn’t sure why. There was something about those kind of announcements that made him wary, and he was right to feel so when Zhou Mi waved toward the window, or the earth at large.

“I was thinking that as soon as I’m fit to sit a horse, I’ll be able to remove myself and leave you to your more important duties. You’ve wasted a great deal of time on me.”

“There was no waste,” Kyuhyun said. “And there is no reason you should need to leave.”

“It would perhaps be better for you,” Zhou Mi said, and it was presented like a suggestion but not one Kyuhyun accepted.

“No. No, it wouldn’t. When you were in your sickbed, I promised you—“

“I thought I was dying,” Zhou Mi said, and his interruption barely felt like it, as smooth as it was. “You likely thought I was dying, too. I won’t hold you to any promises made then.”

“I wouldn’t let myself believe you were dying,” Kyuhyun shot back. “I wanted you at peace, but I promised nothing I was unwilling to keep.”

“Given we have less of an idea when my end will be, how could we hold to that? You would not want me here for years on end. Maybe you’d be tempted to nudge it closer,” Zhou Mi said, shrugging.

“Now you presume to know my thoughts? There is a place for you on my council, at my side. There is years of work to be done, and it won’t be easy but you’ve shown yourself more than capable.”

It was Zhou Mi’s turn to bark out a laugh of disbelief. “Your men would have no reason to trust me, especially those few who saw how I was with you. They would constantly be second-guessing me.”

“I don’t think so,” Kyuhyun told him. Actually, he knew. Zhou Mi had pointed out nearly the same thing to him. “They know your purpose behind all of your actions, how you saved every single one of us. If anything, they admire your courage.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” Zhou Mi said. “But you? To remind yourself of… Of betrayal.”

“Not your betrayal,” Kyuhyun said.

Zhou Mi looked through the open window, his hands curling into fists as he thought. 

“I don’t know how to answer you. I dreamed so many things while I was ill,” Zhou Mi said, touching the back of his fingers as though something there bothered him. “Singing, and laughter. You appeared before my eyes calling my name as though you were in distress. I tried so hard to reach for you, to find how I could help you. Once, you kissed my hand like I was a beloved friend. How silly, those dreams, but what you offer me is not less silly than that.”

The way Zhou Mi had touched his hand. The kiss Kyuhyun had pressed to his fingers when he had been overjoyed that Zhou Mi had woken and known him.

“Then you do remember,” Kyuhyun said, stepping forward. “Not all of those were dreams. I did sing for you, and when you woke I did call your name. Sometimes you didn’t know me, but at least once you did. You wiped the tears off of my cheek.”

And from Zhou Mi’s widened eyes, he remembered that too, maybe thinking it only some fiction conjured by his mind.

“I don’t hate you,” Kyuhyun stated clearly. “In the time you’ve been healing, there is so much uncertainly, so many paths to forge. If you left, you would take away one of the few people I have true faith in. One of the only men I trust.”

“What if that was part of my plan?” Zhou Mi countered, and still he questioned Kyuhyun’s belief.

“My doubts of you, they died in your sickbed, not you.” He could have easily manipulated the situation, told Zhou Mi that he had stayed and so Zhou Mi had to as well. But he couldn’t, even as he placed himself close, so that he could look right into Zhou Mi’s face. “If you can’t stay, I understand. But if you leave, it should be because of your own needs.”

And Kyuhyun’s lips quirked. “It wasn’t my misplaced trust that was my downfall, but the willful greed of others and my own blindness. You taught me that. The lessons I have learned, I can only hope they will make me a better king. To provide a better life for my people. One of those people is you.”

“You want me here,” Zhou Mi queried, baffled somehow still.

“Should I write it down, so you can remember?" Kyuhyun teased.

It was not a subject who hugged his king then, but a man who had thought he had lost all trust from others. But he hadn’t. Kyuhyun couldn’t pretend that he was somehow more than anyone else, but their lives had been tied together for more years than he could count. They bore scars for each other, some older than others. Kyuhyun’s arms wrapped around Zhou Mi’s ribs, the sturdiness of him, and heard how uneven Zhou Mi’s breaths were. He was trusted. Wanted. Remembered.

“One day a boy came to play. He had long legs and could always outrun me and being the spoiled little prince I was, it made me angry,” Kyuhyun said, smiling at the memory. “He wouldn’t tell me his name but he smiled at me, and held my hand, and read with me. He promised me I’d see him again, and I thought that meant the next day. Or the next. How many years I’ve waited for you, Zhou Mi.”

He was not ashamed of the tears shed into Zhou Mi’s shoulder, nor by the few and quiet sobs that wracked Zhou Mi’s body. It almost felt like maybe they could heal. If anyone questioned Zhou Mi’s place beside him, he would teach them that Zhou Mi belonged there. He didn’t care if he had to pretend that he knew of Zhou Mi’s plan all along. The man that had sat so casually on Kyuhyun’s throne, and the one who had nearly lost his life because of Kyuhyun, he would not be sent away alone. He wasn’t ashamed to think that with Zhou Mi he was stronger. It was his turn to protect.

There was a place for Zhou Mi there. Not only because of their matching scars, and all Zhou Mi had done. There was a place for him.

***


End file.
